The crime was eerily reminiscent of the Delaware kidnapping case where Howie was unsuccessful. The vehicle was different but this time he was able to record the South Carolina license plate number. After a silent prayer, I telephoned the tip line. Martha and Quinn were readying for our restaurant dinner in their room and Betsy was upstairs usurping the single bathroom. Howie and I waited turns in the living room.
While Howie was joyous that the kidnapper might be apprehended, he remained shaken by having watched the abduction. Raw fingers plucked at his lengthening hair, his hair piece long since dumped. Now enrolled in college, he was dressing the part, as if trying to fit in. I remained seriously concerned about the toll the sessions were exerting on him.
"How are classes going?" I asked, more to take his mind off mayhem than to elicit information.
"Good, good," he answered. "I'm psyched about a philosophy class but there's lots of reading involved. It takes work to concentrate and remember."
"Are you making any friends?"
"Most are young. There's one I chat with some times." With Howie, that was a lengthy conversation. While he now had the ability to chase his past, he refused vehemently to do so. Just approaching the subject was verboten.
"Your turn," Betsy called, cutting off further conversation.
We chose a seafood establishment where we knew a back booth would provide the privacy we needed for our important postponed conversation. Our nervous quintet settled in, ordered wine for the drinkers and waited for one of us to start the conversation. There was a lion in the linen closet and no one wanted to reach for the towel.
"So where is Shangri-La?" Quinn asked, arresting everyone's attention.
"What do you mean?" his wife asked.
"This Cooms guy said he'd fix us up any place we wanted, didn't he? If he isn't blowing smoke, it's a world-class opportunity. He's a genie offering a bottle with a flying carpet tossed in. Think about it. The world's our atlas if we have the guts to flip a coin and take a chance." Frankly, I was shocked by Quinn's comments. He was the resident cynic and nay-sayer and now the first to jump in and embrace this scary opportunity.
"Flip five coins and hope they all come up the same," I cautioned.
Quinn wasn't finished. "We've skated around saying nothing since Ben played us Mr. Cooms' conversation. I'd say it's time to speak our minds."
"And what does your mind have to say?" my wife asked.
"Here's my ante. I, for one, would like to find a secure place in a medium size town, with all of us living nearby. There's this God-given gift hanging up there like a paper moon that only the five of us can make happen. We're know we can't walk away from what we're doing nor can we sustain it on our own."